Meetings Community listservs and wandering balloons

What can I say, I love listservs. I just joined the two Google Group listservs, MeCo (short for MeetingsCommunity) and MiForum, which currently is replacing the bulletin board community that replaced the venerated MIMlist listserv. From the double-posting I've been seeing, a lot of folks are on both. While neither has yet grown to the size of the former MIMList, both are great resources if you want to find a great restaurant in Tampa or recommendations about specific hotels. Both seem to be mostly working on the logistics level at the moment (I've only been on for a couple of days now, so this might be just a blip), but some of the conversations are just so, well, meeting planner-y.

Like the one on MeCo about what to do when balloons escape to the rafters short of paying the facility's fee for recapturing them. While one person said hired hands bought a BB gun to shoot them down (not recommended!!), I thought this was a very cool solution: Send up another balloon, this one on a leash, that's covered with double-sided tape. Let it float near the loose balloon, bump into it so they stick together, then reel them both back down. The ingeniousness of meeting planners never fails to amaze me.

Anyway, these listservs are great resources for anyone in or around the meetings and hospitality business—I highly recommend them both.